Visitors to New Life Mission’s food pantry in Hamilton last week might have noticed the pre-packaged bags of pantry staples felt a little emptier.
Some of them didn’t have pancake mix. Others had only one can of fruit compared to the usual two.
“We're running a little low, and that's really kind of the ebb and flow of what's available for us to get,” said Felix Russo, executive director of the faith-based resource center that serves all of Butler County.
The organization’s food pantry collects donations from community members, but gets much of its food from Shared Harvest — an area food bank that distributes supplies to more than 100 partners throughout parts of Southwest Ohio, including Butler and Warren counties.
Historically, about half of the 13 million pounds of food Shared Harvest distributes annually came from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. But federal cuts mean now just under a quarter of Shared Harvest’s food is from the USDA, and the food bank’s executive director, Terry Perdue, says the replacement food from retailers is “somewhat unpredictable, inconsistent.”
At the pantry level, that means trouble for New Life Mission’s bottom line.
“Our food cost has gone up, just in general because food costs have gone up,” Russo said. “And anything that we can't get through Shared Harvest that we have to go buy — then again that's raising our prices.”
At the same time food banks and pantries face higher costs and limited resources, more people are seeking assistance.
Just a few years ago, Russo said anywhere from 20 to 40 families would visit the pantry per day. Now, 40 is more like the minimum. And some days, Russo sees as many as 80 families walk through the doors.
He says the pantry can only provide families with a round of non-perishables, meat, bread and produce once a month. But:
“If we had the capacity to do two times a month, the need would be there,” he said. “They would be here.”
The same is true across the board, Perdue said. Over the past five years, Shared Harvest has gone from serving 30,000 people a month through its network to 50,000 — a figure he suspects will continue to increase.
“We were designed to be an emergency provider when families experience an intermittent or incidental crisis — loss of job, a health issue — we were there to stand in the gap,” Perdue said. “And now, based on what is happening in the world — the lack of access and affordability — people are coming to us, turning to us, like a grocery store.”
Perdue attributed some of this to changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program that have made food access unpredictable for families.
From July 2025 to July 2026, the most recent month with available data, the percentage of Ohioans participating in SNAP dropped about 9%, from nearly 1.45 million to 1.32 million. In the same time period, the money doled out also decreased by 9%.
Despite the changes, as of April, nearly 10% of Butler County residents were SNAP recipients.
Another reason for more visitors to area food pantries is the cost of living, both Russo and Perdue said.
“There is a saying in our world where the rent eats first,” Perdue said. “When people are paying so much for rent or for medicine or for childcare — the list goes on and on — food is typically the last expense that people have anything left for.”
Food prices aren’t immune to increases, either.
“People can't afford beef, and so then they turn to less expensive protein like chicken. And when chicken becomes expensive, they turn to eggs, and when eggs become expensive, they turn to things like peanut butter,” Perdue said. “These are continual choices that we don't realize families have to make, and then ultimately it's, ‘What single item can I get to feed my family?’”
For Russo, there is one positive he sees stemming from the crisis: it has encouraged people not to stigmatize those who visit food pantries, because he says so many understand why the cost of groceries can be hard to handle.
“I think people are seeing that more now. It's not just that easy,” Russo said. “There's a thousand and one reasons why people have to come into our food pantry.”
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